TOP 10 POPULAR CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS (CMS)

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WORDPRESS WordPress is a CMS and blogging platform that grants you complete control of website creation and maintenance. It can be downloaded for free and installed in a couple of minutes. WordPress is an open source software that has over 10,000 paid and free templates and plugins; these templates, plugins, and any other WordPress files and code are freely customizable. One of the most interesting features of WordPress is the ability to mass edit posts by using built-in features. These built-in features allow you to delete multiple posts and edit settings, such as categories, tags, author, and comments. There are several modules that impart extended editing capabilities, such as editing an entire category, media categories, and custom post types. It is preferred by businesses because it allows them to update content without the help of a developer, access content securely from anywhere in the world, display content on social media sites, and connect with customers and bloggers. WordPress is really easy to learn, and you can use it even if you don’t have any programming experience.

DRUPAL is a free, PHP-based CMS and application framework that is used to manage online content and create new applications. This easy-to-use software allows you to quickly update, organize, maintain, and reuse different types of content without hiring a developer. Also, content is indexable, searchable, and trackable. Perhaps one of the most interesting features of Drupal is that it allows you to define rules that can execute any number of actions and can have any number of conditions associated with it. For instance, you can add a rule that an email has to be sent out every time content is published. Furthermore, Drupal is equipped with over 14,000 modules that belong to various categories, including administration, e-commerce, language, and development. It has excellent multilingual capabilities—not only can you display content in different languages for each page, but you can also link pages to the menus that display available languages. You can also build different types of menus, such as main, navigation, user, and taxonomy menus. Last but not least, businesses can build a community by using polls, forums, forms, and social media.

JOOMLA is a free, community-driven CMS that supports 64 languages and more than 10,000 niche and topic-specific templates that are used to create websites for corporate, magazines, newspapers, and small businesses. You can edit the code of a template or create a new template by copying an older template. In addition, it is really easy to create, modify, and manage content in Joomla—you do not need any technical training to do so. You can add posts, images, polls, and videos by using Joomla’s browser-based interface. You can also control the time of publication by specifying a later date for publication. Furthermore, Joomla’s core framework can be used to develop complex systems, such as inventory control systems, custom product catalogues, data reporting tools, and communication tools. This CMS supports over 8000 extensions that fall under various categories, including search, multimedia, languages, and mobile layout. Joomla currently hosts a large online support base that is comprised of forums, documentation, and resources. Lastly, it allows you to migrate your website to any other server.

UMBRACO Umbraco is a free, cloud-based, ASP.NET CMS that comes equipped with 12 languages. It can create simple to complex sites that meet the needs of several industries, some of which are law firms, corporations, and universities. It comes loaded with several customizable master templates that can be easily altered by using programming languages, such as ASP.NET, CSS, or HTML. Perhaps what sets Umbraco apart from its competitors is its bug-fix warranty that comes along with free technical support from a team of experts.

Umbraco makes content management an easier task by granting you complete control of content markup, content storage, user permissions, document versions, and navigation menus. You can use the markup features to edit the code and templates. You can store videos, images, and documents in different folders of the media documents library. You can manage user permissions to allow specific users access to different sections of a website and multiple websites; you can also manage documentation projects by assigning different roles, such as writer and editor, to users. Lastly, you can create many versions of the same document and publish previous versions.

FROG CMS Frog CMS is a free, PHP-based CMS that supports multiple backend databases including MySQL. It is easy to use—you don’t have to know PHP in order to create posts. Its navigation menus are hierarchical so you can easily categorize information in pages and subpages. Pages can be customized to include additional content divisions, such as summaries and metadata. Page layouts are reusable and can be assigned to multiple pages. Also, you can upload files into directories and provide links to them in your posts. Frog CMS allows you to reuse code and graphics across multiple pages, headers, and footers. Like other content management systems, Frog CMS supports several plugins that belong to various categories, such as images, contact forms, editing, file management, and comment moderation. Although this CMS is flexible and user-friendly, it has only a small online support community and limited online help documentation.

CONCRETE5 Concrete5 is a free and open source CMS that is designed to meet the needs of individuals, businesses, professionals, designers, and developers. Since its birth, Concrete5 has been steadily building reputation among start-up businesses and Fortune 500 companies, including Kodak, Sprint, and FedEx. Its browser-based WYSIWYG editor allows you to quickly edit your website and SEO content. Concrete5’s customizable interface allows you to use a variety of plugins, including custom templates, SEO, statistics, Google Analytics, and image galleries; edit themes and page layouts by using coding languages and content blocks respectively; and, build complex applications by using LAMP stack and Windows web servers. Version 5.5 and later integrates Twitter Bootstrap, which is a UI framework that allows developers to create dynamic website elements, such as forms and popovers, by using HTML markup and CSS—thus, you can have access to innovative and powerful themes and plugins. Last but not least, you have access to forums, online chat, online help documentations, newsletters, and a bug tracker.

COMMERCIAL SHOPIFY Shopify is an e-commerce platform that offers a fully customizable online storefront to businesses and professionals. It allows you to sell online and at your store locations. You can choose to integrate your online store with over 50 payment gateways, including PayPal, SecurePay, Worldpay, and NETbilling. The integrity of online transactions is maintained by 128-bit SSL certificate. Furthermore, Shopify offers a centralized management dashboard that allows you to add, edit, and organize content—you can add information about products, upload relevant images and videos, and manage inventory in just a few minutes. Some other benefits offered by Shopify are unlimited worldwide web hosting; calculation of shipping rates; hundreds of customizable templates; online marketing by using site engine optimization, discount codes, and coupons; and built-in analytics to track sales, customers, and campaign progress.

SQUARESPACE SquareSpace is built specifically to meet the needs of individuals, businesses, retail stores, and professionals. The monthly packages are very affordable, and all the packages include a free custom domain. SquareSpace is loaded with many types of customizable templates that support a variety of content type that are categorized as blocks, such as text, image, video, form, and newsletter. Depending on the template, some pages such as index or blog, may show as projects—all of these pages display under the +Projects item of the top navigation menu. You can also add different pages or content collections, such as Gallery, Products, Events, Index, and Blog. Perhaps the most dynamic page is the Products page that allows you to build an online store to manage inventory, orders, packing slips, and customers. SquareSpace ensure the integrity of online transactions by using 128-bit SSL certification. Last but not least, this CMS tracks visitors; provides visitor demographics, search keywords, and RSS statistics; and identifies your top performing content.

MAGENTO Magento is an online e-commerce solution that has three different versions: 1) Magento Go, 2) Magento Community, and 3) Magento Enterprise. Magento Go is designed for small businesses, and it has an affordable price range from $15/month till $125/month. Magento Community is the free, open source version of Magento that is designed for small and medium- sized businesses who either possess a lot of technical knowledge or are willing to hire a developer. Magento Enterprise is designed for medium to large-sized businesses, and it is extremely expensive—the fee is $15,550/year or $1300/month.

You can use Magento to manage sales, inventory, and customers; create and update product catalogues, promotions, newsletters, and reports; and, maintain one or multiple online stores. Magento’s multi-store functionality—one of its most stunning features—allows you to manage products for different stores in one interface. You can offer discounts at the products page or at the checkout. You can bulk edit prices for specific stores by adding or subtracting a flat value or a percentage to the original price. Furthermore, you have the option to choose from numerous shipping companies, like UPS and DHL, and payment gateways, like PayPal and Authorize.Net. Last but not least, you can integrate your store with Amazon and eBay so that your products and inventory are shared among these distribution networks.

CUSHY CMS Cushy CMS is a self-hosted CMS; its Pro version can be downloaded for a monthly fee of C$28. Cushy CMS allows you to mark up regions of the pages that can be edited and assign editors to specific pages. You can customize the content by uploading style sheets through the FTP (file transfer protocol) and the WYSIWYG editor. You can also edit page templates by adding repeatable regions that can be repeatedly added as many times as desired. Furthermore, you can customize the editor by specifying buttons, such as format, bold, and italic. Cushy CMS allows you to represent your brand by uploading your logo, color scheme, domain name, and custom welcome emails. Lastly, it has a strong support section that contains demo videos, documentations, discussion group, and RSS feed for tracking page changes.